DIY

Who thought that building things around your own home was a good idea? That’s what builders are for (the clue is in the name). I wouldn’t try and build an engine for my car, I’ll leave that to the professionals. Generally when there is a living to be made doing something it’s because lots of people don’t possess the necessary skill to do it themselves. That’s me; the most hopeless person ever to have attempted anything vaguely DIY related.

I’m staggeringly impatient. This is the first drawback. The second, and major, drawback is that I just do not possess the aptitude for it. Don’t get me wrong, I recognise my DIY limits more than anyone so I only take on the simplest of tasks but I often manage to underestimate even those. This invariably results in a cacophony of unrepeatable language. The start of a DIY attempt commonly coincides with my wife making sure she’s at the other end of the house or, better still, in a different county.

In my last house I put up some CD shelves. There were three holes for securing each shelf to the wall and I left one overnight (half filled) to ensure it was properly attached. Next morning it was fine, so I filled it with the remaining CDs. When I came down the following morning the shelf lay in the middle of the floor, surrounded by scattered CDs. I swore a bit. Now, I’m a man who believes in overkill. If I can’t open something I generally result to brute force, normally with the biggest hammer I can find. No word of a lie, I once tried to get a car stereo in place with a hammer (which is ironic given that kids probably use one to remove them under torchlight). Anyway, plainly a hammer wouldn’t work in this case so what I actually did was make nine more holes in the shelf and attached it to the wall with twelve screws and half a tube of No More Nails (just to be sure). The only thing that’ll get that shelf off the wall is a wrecking ball so I hope the bloke who bought the house likes CDs.

I’ve made the mistake a few times of underestimating a painting task. That’s easy right? You lob the paint on the wall and job done. For the last room I painted I even bought the ‘one coat’ stuff to speed the process up (did I mention I’m impatient?). When they named it ‘one coat’, I want to know who did the counting. I mean, it’s not a big number (that’s kind of the point). Did they lose count or was someone in the marketing department dyslexic? It must have been a marketing thing because ‘three coats if you’re lucky’ doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Buying any kind of furniture which requires assembly is normally a nightmare too. First off, at least two screws will be missing. I built a bench for the garden and I swear they did it on purpose. Not only were the screws missing but they were such an obscure size that I had to visit three DIY shops before I found the correct sized ones. Once you overcome the component shortage you’re then left to deal with instructions which look like they were drawn on tracing paper with crayons by a five year old. In the dark. The printers then remove a couple of stages from the process and you’re left wondering how the cabinet you’re building went from comprising of sixteen separate sections to the finished article in a single, seamless step.

Then there are the DIY shops, catering to the belief that the every day bloke can build himself a two storey extension over the course of a long weekend. There are two types of people in DIY shops; those who stroll around confidently (they’re there to buy a three mill flange-nut hexagonal converter and know its application intimately) and then there’s me. I’m the clueless bloke, repeating my steps down the same aisles (looking just as confused and lost as the three previous forays past the array of spanners).

I’ve said all this but, of course, you’re not a man without a good tool kit (no double entendre intended). It is acceptable to enter a DIY store and gaze longingly at chainsaws with motors powerful enough to run a yacht. A psychologist would probably be interested in what compels me to look at the scythes, axes and hammers while wondering which ones could genuinely be used in a new Friday 13th movie. I’m not going to ask though. My point is a man without a tool kit is... well, he’s a girl. It doesn’t matter if you can use it or not but when someone asks if you have a three quarter inch wrench you need to be able to give a positive response. It’s the law.

Coffee Drinkers

I’m English and, as the world knows, that means I must drink copious amounts of tea. It’s one of our national stereotypes along with bad teeth and using phrases such as ‘jolly good show, old chap’. If you’re like me (and for your sake, I hope you’re not) then you don’t like coffee and you may understand the premise of my forthcoming rant – but only if you make your drink in a communal area.

Either I’m unlucky, in that the coffee drinkers I share resources with all have Parkinson’s disease, or it is a deliberate act of sabotage to infect our company’s sugar supply with lumps of crystallised rabbit excrement. I’m unsure why coffee drinkers cannot make their beverage without depositing large quantities of the stuff in the sugar bowl. It’s surely not that difficult. If you dislike coffee, you’ll understand; just a couple of grains of the devil’s spawn makes an entire cup of tea taste like you slurped it directly from a cow’s backside. There’s nothing I enjoy more than sifting through sugar trying to extricate the offending lumps of Nestle’s finest, so I’m giving serious consideration to returning the favour. I fear that spilling open tea bags into coffee supplies isn’t going to cut it; the ‘flavour’ of the beans is enough to kill taste buds so I reckon it’ll have no problem against a few tea leaves. No, something more radical is required and I think I’m onto a win-win scenario. Apparently Cyanide is likely to have an acidic taste. I’m unsure how that’ll work out when mixed with coffee, but the resultant decrease in our office population ought to ensure that the sugar supply remains uncontaminated in future.

Christmas

When I was growing up Christmas was my favourite time of year and it remains so in many ways. You got time off school, loads of presents and you saw all your family and friends. Also, people were normally more cheery.

Nowadays all I seem to hear about is how Christmas lights are offending a bunch of immigrants so we should take them down. I never realised a flashing reindeer and a snowman could be distasteful. I’m not especially religious so maybe I’m missing the point but I always thought being tolerant of other people’s beliefs was a creditable approach. It seems not. Because the UK has veered too far in the direction of political correctness (so far that we’ve crashed through the barrier and emerged on the wrong side of the road) anything which might offend someone in a minority group is deemed bad. And then it’s probably banned.

I’ve done a fair amount of travelling, but at no point did I wander into a South East Asian country and expect them to change their traditions to suit me. I’d have had less respect for them if they did. I was a visitor in their country so I should have been expected to respect their customs and practices, and rightly so.

Anyway, that’s a minor rant but not where I was ultimately going. I do still enjoy Christmas even though I’m acutely aware it might make me a hypocrite if I’m not a Christian. For me, not much has changed in what I enjoy since I was a kid. I tend to add more alcohol to my festivities now and I don’t really hope for the latest Transformer as a gift (although it’s preferable to socks).

I can still be irritable though so appreciate not being interrupted during my evening meal with a bunch of carol singers wishing to regale me with Silent Night. In fact, let me expand that to Christmas music in general. Why, when you work in an office, is there always someone who thinks normal rules go out the window at Christmas? I’m not permitted to play Marilyn Manson in July, so why the hell do they get to play Santa Claus Is Coming To Town in December?

Once these people have finished decorating their desks with tinsel, fairy lights, novelty snowmen and any other nonsense they can lay their hands on they start on the music. Out come the crappy Christmas Compilation CDs and they decide that everyone within twenty desks would like to listen to a song no-one in their right mind cared about when it was released twenty years ago, let alone today. Throwing a couple of Christmas references into a crap song doesn't instantly transform it into something The Beatles would have been proud of. But that’s right; they decide on your behalf. Don’t question it though, because apparently having functional hearing and a reasonable taste in music to tantamount to being a “bah humbug miserable bastard”.

The Chairman at my company told one of the guys to turn his music off one year. No-one wants to hear the same CD on repeat every bloody day for a month. There’s only so many times I can hear Fairytale In New York before I start wanting to maim people (for the record, it’s about three times). Anyway, the guy in question thought he was joking until the Chairman repeated his request and then told me I could punch him if he played it again. True story. I think the last part might have been a joke, but I was willing to test him on it if I so much as heard a single bar from anything by Slade.

Rolling out the same films at Christmas is actually a positive thing. You can never have too much Indiana Jones, Star Wars or Batman at Christmas, although The Sound of Music is a step too far for me. I’ve absolutely no issue with Miracle On 34th Street being repeated each year because I can change the channel. But, if someone tied me to a chair and subjected me to it every day I should not be held accountable for my actions. Besides, watching these movies allows you to skip the Queen’s Speech while you’re tucking into a turkey the size of an ostrich. For a while I worked from home, which was lucky for me (and anyone who thinks they’re bringing Christmas spirit to the office) as I could listen to Nine Inch Nails without being labelled the Grinch. If I wanted to feel the Christmas spirit I’d go outside and throw snowballs at small children. It’s all about choice.

Still, I maintain a level of enjoyment over the festivities (a.k.a. drinking time) and getting people presents is now infinitely easier thanks to internet shopping. Now I have a daughter I’ll be able to indulge her at Christmas once she’s a bit older, although I have to say I’m a little disappointed. When you walk into any big toy store the options are endless; a giant sea of choice, wrapped in brightly coloured plastic and enticing advertising. I’m still drawn to the boy’s toys and who wouldn’t be? I had bucket loads of Star Wars figures when I was younger and you can still get them now, only they’ve been improved and there’s even more choice. Plus there’s loads of other cool stuff like dinosaurs with rocket launchers attached to their backs and huge race tracks you can snake around the house. What do they have for girls? My little bloody pony and some pretend kitchen sets? It’s about as dull as it gets. I’ll even avoid the sexist joke about kitchens (it’s too easy), but where’s the adventure in pretending to make breakfast? I’ll be the first to tell her; I’ve done it in real life and it’s boring. I wouldn’t necessarily choose for her to grow up wearing Doc Martins and sporting a shaved head but I wonder what damage I could possibly do by buying her the latest toy rocket launchers and machine guns each year. At least I could play with them when she got bored.